


Medically Speaking, You're Adorable

by AndreaLyn



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Grey's Anatomy fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:51:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim thought it was just a one night stand until McCranky turns out to be his Professor McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medically Speaking, You're Adorable

The towel is barely covering his ass. Jim rouses from the couch and groans as something in his back starts to pull and twinge. He tries his best to ignore that while sitting up slowly, trying to place where he is. While he can’t answer that, he does remember what he’s been drinking.  _Tequila_ , he remembers with an inward groan. Tequila and shuttles and cranky divorced doctors. Oh lord. Jim stares at the naked body on the wooden floor and begins to remember each and every moment of the night before, slowly trickling back to him in high-definition.   
  
 _He had grabbed hold of Jim by the hair and yanked him in for a furious kiss, tasting of so much alcohol and the faint reek of cigarettes that intoxicate Jim like a cheap perfume on a girl in a miniskirt. Jim had gone willingly because it had been so easy. One shirt was stripped off and then the rest of the clothes seemed to fall in turn until they were twisting and twining around on the floor without anything but condoms and lube to brace them._  
  
Jim rubs at his eyes and presses the heel of his hand to his forehead as he sneaks his other hand under the blanket to find his pants. “Uh...Leonard? Leonard Last-Name-I-Don’t-Really-Remember?”  
  
Instead of the last name, he gets a grunt. Jim arches his brow as he hobbles and jumps into his pants and runs a hand through his hair, checking his reflection in the mirror. His hair isn’t going to be behaving anytime soon, but he doesn’t have time to worry about it. It’s his first day of Starfleet and he’s already got a Xenobiology 101 lecture to attend.   
  
“I have to get going, do we want to talk?” Jim asks as he grabs his t-shirt and corrals it around his neck, pulling it down over his torso. “You know, the talk? The ‘let’s tell each other that we’re going to see each other again and that it meant something’ talk?”  
  
All he gets is one more grunt.   
  
Jim takes that as a sign to leave. “Okay, Cranky. I guess I’ll see you never, then.” He salutes lazily and grabs his jacket as he leaves the apartment with the wooden floors and the antique furniture that probably hasn’t belonged for centuries. He’s  _late_ , he’s so late and he barely has time to check in to get his official books for the semester before sprinting onwards to the lecture hall, bumping into an innumerable amount of people on the way and getting a couple numbers from women in amazing Starfleet skirts.   
  
 _God_ , he kind of loves it here. He just hopes that he’s not about to get booted from class because he’s not in cadet reds.   
  
“Xeno 101?” he asks a random stranger as he gets into Rozanski Hall and sees a mostly-empty lobby and at least a dozen doors leading to other places of study.   
  
The man points to the side and Jim bursts into the door and finds...no one teaching yet. Jim exhales heavily with relief as he realizes that he’s not going to get in deep shit with his first professor of the day just because he decided to have incredible whirlwind mad wild sex all night. Jim grins as he takes a seat in the first row of the six-hundred seat lecture hall of people and starts to look into what he can expect from this class in terms of competition from the other cadets.   
  
“God, McCoy is a pain in the ass,” Jim overhears someone nearby bitching loudly. “I heard the last college he taught at had a seventy-percent fail rate.” Jim just leans back in his chair and smirks smugly. He’s a genius and he’s bound to not only pass the course, but wreck the bell-curve. He sprawls back and glances at the chatting classmates to find a young kid with curls, an Asian man, a blonde woman, and his personal friend Miss Uhura.   
  
“We meet again,” Jim says with a wink. “So, what’s this about McCoy being a nightmare?” He shuffles his books and changes rows so that he’s sitting in row three with the others, even if Uhura rolls her eyes the way she does at his seating change. “Isn’t he new?”  
  
“This is his first Starfleet class, but there are rumors about him. Horrible rumors, rumors about how he actually took a scalpel to a student who couldn’t figure out a simple appie on a Vulcan,” the young boy with curls whispers eagerly, grinning at Jim.   
  
“Well, did he at least take the scalpel to a decent part of the body?” Jim has to ask.   
  
“No,” the blonde remarks calmly. “I’m Christine Chapel. And this is Hikaru Sulu, and you seem to know Uhura.”   
  
“And I am Pavel Andre...”  
  
“We don’t have time for the full introduction, shut up, Chekov,” Sulu interrupts as the main doors to the room bang open and Professor McCoy storms into the room.   
  
Jim stares at the man entering the room and feels his heart sink into his stomach as he takes in the sight of Professor McCoy. Leonard Cranky-Grunty McCoy. He’s stuck in shock and he feels like he wants to sneak up the aisle until he disappears out the back door of the class and never come back, even if Pike is going to insist that he needs this class in order to graduate.   
  
“Good morning, class,” McCoy starts as he takes off his reading glasses and runs a hand through his hair, setting his books down on the table and making Jim think about those fingers pressing against his clavicle and whispering dirty words and medical terms against Jim’s throat. “I’m Doctor McCoy, I’ll be teaching you Xenobiology 101. This is not a bird course, this is not a difficult course. This is a course that will be  _simple_ ,” he announces, voice carrying up to the rafters, “if you just make sure you study and apply yourself. You will need eight hours outside of this class in order to pull a C.”  
  
Jim is still stuck staring as he exhales heavily and tries to sink into a black hole that should be opening up at the base of his chair any second. At least, there would be one if there were a God or a godly-type being listening to his prayers.  
  
“Are you okay?” Christine asks, leaning over to whisper curiously. “You look like you want to vanish.”  
  
“I slept with the Prof,” Jim whispers back to her, trying to hide his face with a hand. “I slept with the Professor.” And it had been incredible and kind of kinky and wonderful and now he’s in his  _class_ , oh god, this is so complicated. He swallows hard and tries to hide behind the book that McCoy has made them all buy because he’s some kind of sadist who likes to kill trees. It’s no good, though. McCoy looks around the room and his gaze lands and latches on Jim.  
  
 _Hi lover_ , Jim finds himself mouthing against his will. Sometimes, he genuinely hates the way his body and his brain try to go against him and make his life a living hell. He holds McCoy’s gaze and sits up straighter, trying to figure out what’s going on. “Does anyone else see McCoy undressing me with his eyes?”  
  
“No,” hisses Uhura.  
  
“Sorry,” Sulu apologizes.  
  
“Very much!” Chekov promises with a thumbs-up and Christine smiles reassuringly at him in a way that promises that Jim isn’t entirely out of his mind.   
  
As McCoy starts in on a fervent lecture about the merits of not assuming and how many asses it makes out of people, Jim realizes one very crystal clear thing: It’s going to be a very  _long_  semester.  
  
**  
  
The next time they meet is in front of the library steps because McCoy’s gone and dropped all his paper books all over the stairs and they’ve started tumbling down, the spines bruising easily. Jim doesn’t say a thing about the antiquated things, but he does stop and help because if anything, he’s going to be the knight in shining armor.   
  
“Hey, Prof,” Jim greets cheerfully. “It’s so strange. I mean, this campus is so small. One night you’re fucking a guy and the next he’s…” He has a feeling that if he finishes that sentence, he’s going to have his insides gutted out on the library steps. “Well, he’s not calling you back the next day for that dinner date you got promised.”  
  
“Jim, give it up, we met on a shuttle and we fucked and now you’re in my class. It’s over.”  
  
“Yeah, no,” Jim disagrees, falling into step at McCoy’s side as they begin the walk down from the library to wherever it is that McCoy’s going. “Call me a dog with a bone, but I’m a little bit stubborn when I want something and you’re the bones I want.”  
  
“You calling yourself a dog, because I don’t think any mother wants a son of a bitch for a kid,” McCoy replies, his gaze firmly forward and not looking at Jim whatsoever. Jim likes to think that it’s because if he looks over at him, he’ll immediately remember all the dirty and incredible and miraculous things they had done in bed, to the side of the bed, on the couch, beside the couch, behind the couch, and in the armchair during their night together.   
  
Jim grins charmingly and hurries so that he’s blocking McCoy’s path, giving him a long look. “Bones,” he chides. “Come on. Remember? We were going to grab dinner and then we were going to have more of that incredible sex and you could surprise me some more about all the ways the body can bend.” He grins warmly. “Are you seriously telling me that because I’m one of six hundred students in your class, you’re going to deny us the chance of seeing how far we could really go?”  
  
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” McCoy says curtly and brushes past Jim with a muttered ‘excuse me’. “And don’t call me Bones!” he shouts back over his shoulder.  
  
Which, really, is the easiest way to ensure that it’s the  _only_  thing Jim calls him for the foreseeable future.  
  
“What was that all about?” Chapel asks as she hooks her arm with Jim’s, approaching from behind with Chekov and leading him onwards. “He was looking extra-dreamy today. It has something to do with the hair.”  
  
“It’s like a helmet, it doesn’t move,” Jim remarks in slight awe, picking up his pace in order to walk with both of them. “He’s still denying me sex.”  
  
“I thought you wanted dinner of him,” Chekov remarks confusedly, his accent warping consonants into something nearly-incomprehensible. “Not sex? Or do you want dinner and then sex! That makes more sense, yes, but you could have just said.”  
  
Jim has to bless the fourteen-year-old. He tries, by god, he tries to fit in. Sometimes, he’s just too young and now’s one of those times judging by the beet-red flush to his cheeks.   
  
Jim shakes his head as he tucks one of Bones’ books under his arm, having stolen it away to keep for himself so that he can have an excuse to go visit the man and return it in order to see if he can’t forcibly push his way into having dinner with him. He grins when they’re joined by Sulu and Uhura, seemingly in the argument about something.  
  
“What’s up with them?” Jim whispers to Chapel.  
  
“Sulu thinks she’s sleeping with a professor.”  
  
“Ah. And?”  
  
“And he doesn’t know which one,” Chapel adds with a knowing smile.   
  
Sulu shakes his head, gesturing in frustration to Uhura. “It has to be your advanced physics professor. There is no way that you’re excelling that quickly in that class.”  
  
Uhura stops where she’s walking and turns, poking him in the chest and walking him backwards until Sulu’s legs hit a stone bench nearby. “Or,” she protests heatedly with a glare in her eyes and a fierce look on her face, “I really am just that smart and just that dedicated and instead of spending hours at a gym every night like  _some_  people, I spend them studying with a tutor who  _excels_  at every subject he’s ever been given.”  
  
Later, much later, Jim will find out that it’s not the professor she’s having the affair, but the rather intently intelligent Vulcan tutor. Which, Jim thinks, is good on her. Everyone deserves to bag themselves a hot guy or girl and getting a Vulcan isn’t exactly an easy grab.   
  
Sulu, at that current moment, is suitably cowed and holds up both hands in defeat. “Okay! Okay,” he remarks, adjusting his collar as he clears his throat. “I take it back.”  
  
“Good boy,” Uhura promptly says, shooting a glare at Jim in passing as she heads off to what Chapel whispers is yet another study session at the library.   
  
Jim holds the book up in his hands as if it’s precious gold and will lead him to salvation. “Meanwhile, I’m going to go return this to McCranky,” he comments. “You never know when he’s going to need a book that tells him how to dissect a Thorassian’s thorax,” he says with a wink in the others’ direction, heading for McCoy’s office and reciting the various lines he’s going to try on the man once he gets inside.   
  
Which, he will. He’s Jim Kirk. There isn’t a no-win scenario as far as he’s concerned, there is only success.   
  
He makes it to McCoy’s office and doesn’t really have much of a plan beyond ‘look absolutely ravishing and hope he remembers just how good it had been’. Which, really, isn’t the best of plans, but it’s a downright masterpiece as far as Jim’s concerned.   
  
He gets there just in time to watch McCoy bite on his lower lip in concentration as he grades papers. Jim thinks it has to be far too early for papers, but there McCoy is, signing and initialling away like his life depends on it.   
  
“If I work hard and apply myself, do you think you could give me extra credit, prof?” So that’s the leading line that Jim goes with and it isn’t exactly the best in the world. Instead of dwelling, he lifts up the book in his hand. “You forgot this. I took it upon myself to be a Good Samaritan and bring it by.”  
  
“You know, most states call this  _stalking_ ,” McCoy warns.   
  
“Why? You work here, I go here, you go here. We just happen to bump into each other. I was perfectly happy to avoid you, but there you were in my classroom looking really well-fucked on day one,” Jim says seriously, even if he’s slightly smug about the latter part. “That’s not my fault. You must have just fucked with karma.”  
  
“Oh, she’s fucked me over,” McCoy assures, grasping the book out of Jim’s hands and placing it on the desk behind him, staying perilously close. “What do you want, Jim?”  
  
“I want you to acknowledge we had an incredible night and now we’re on the same campus together and there’s absolutely no reason…”  
  
“You’re my  _student_!”  
  
“…no reason at all that stretches past this semester for us to not have more of those incredible nights. Tell me you didn’t have fun,” Jim dares. “I felt something with the sex we had that I haven’t in ages and I don’t just mean that you’re incredibly flexible,” he jokes, sliding even closer and letting his fingers slowly glide up McCoy’s spine, teasing and slow. “You and me had  _fun_. And I want to do it again.”  
  
“I don’t need a sex buddy,” McCoy growls, but he doesn’t exactly push Jim away.  
  
Jim shrugs and looks at him considerately. “Okay. So, you’re a drunk on a shuttle and I’m a beat-up repeat offender from Iowa. If we can’t be fuckbuddies, wanna go out with me this weekend and you can analyze me for your class? I’ll let you play doctor,” Jim teases.  
  
“I will make you a deal. You stop with the godawful innuendo and we can have a meal at the nearest diner,” McCoy pleads.  
  
That’s a success in Jim’s book and he grins. “It’s a start,” he decides with a nod.   
  
What it is turns out to be a downhill roll that doesn’t stop and only accelerates as time goes on, like physics can’t just belong in a classroom, but suddenly has to be applied to their lives as well.   
  
They see each other at the diner often. They have sex every other day. They have proper dinner every week. Jim calls himself A God Amongst Students and the Xenobiology class begins to think that McCoy is biased towards Jim because of their relationship (which was only so secret until Professor Archer caught them making out in one of the small personal shuttlecrafts, fogging up the windows and spilling tequila all over the grated floors). Jim brags that of course he has an A considering the relaxation techniques he uses on McCoy in order to keep him happy.   
  
Things are going so great that Jim keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.   
  
The other shoe is definitely not the one he expects because he didn’t think that anyone wears those stilettos these days. They’re insanely high and there’s a gorgeous woman attached to them, making her way across the courtyard while Jim is busy sliding his arm around Bones’ waist to pull him closer, laughing about something Chekov had suggested in class that would’ve killed a Cardassian, Romulan, and Vulcan in a single swoop of a scalpel.   
  
“So this is why you haven’t returned my calls,” the other shoe says to Bones as she stops right in front of them.   
  
Jim lets out a brisk laugh and opens his mouth, ready to unleash a little comment about how female stalkers (no matter how attractive) have absolutely no shot with Bones, so she might as well stop before she even starts. One look at Bones, though, and Jim’s suddenly confused as to why he’s gone so suddenly pale and so starkly shocked.  
  
“Bones?”  
  
“Oh, that’s just adorable,” she says and slides her arm over his shoulders, adjusting his cadet-red uniform (worn because McCoy protests that he’s only guest-lecturing and he’s still a student in the eyes of Starfleet, so he’s not about to piss them off). “He hasn’t told you about me?”  
  
“No, I would’ve remembered him telling me about a masochistic woman who needs shoes that high to elevate herself above the world,” Jim replies evenly, something cool and threatening in his tone.   
  
She just smiles calmly. “You do have a type,” she snorts. “I’m Jocelyn. Jocelyn McCoy. His  _wife_.”  
  
Jim turns to Bones and gapes at him, all retorts and sarcasm failing at that moment because one thought is continuously circling his head again and again. “You’re _married_? All the times we were sleeping together and we were having dinner and you were saying you loved me, you couldn’t have mentioned that you were  _married_!?”  
  
“You cheated on me,” McCoy growls at Jocelyn. “With Clay, with my  _best friend_ , you cheated on me.”  
  
“Well, Clay and I have ceased our arrangement for the temporary time-being. We thought it would be a good idea if I came out here. We never divorced, Leonard, we just stopped being what we were. And we were  _good_.”  
  
Jim looks to Bones to figure out if any of this is having any kind of effect and terrifyingly, it looks like Bones isn’t just going to toss her on her ass. There have to be divorce papers somewhere, there has to be some document that proves that they’re no longer bound together until death do they part. Jim isn’t about to give up everything he’s found just because she’s decided to come looking for  _closure_.  
  
Jim isn’t exactly on good terms with closure. If he were, there would be a ship in the outer stars of space burning into the nearest atmosphere and crumbling in the sky in exchange for what it did to his father.   
  
He tenses as he stares at Jocelyn and she just looks dismissively past him, like he doesn’t even warrant  _consideration_.   
  
He breathes in and then out and stares at Bones desperately.   
  
“Bones,” Jim pleads.   
  
“She’s my wife, Jim. I know that a lot has happened, but I have to be the kind of man who still has a morsel of dignity left in his veins,” Bones admits quietly, moving his hand up and down the center of his cadet-red uniform, up and then down in the nervous gesture. “Jim,” Bones counsels, quieter than before, words meant for only his ears to hear. “I promise you that I’m not just about to cut you out of my life, but you have to let me try and see where the dice fall.”   
  
Jim gives a terse nod and glares at Jocelyn as he doesn’t even bother to say goodbye to Bones.  
  
He guesses that’s just how  _that_  little piece has decided to fall.   
  
*  
  
The group of them had been having a study session when Jim interrupts and flops down on Sulu’s bed, burying his face in a seemingly-endless pile of pillows and beddings and trying to will the world away. Instead, he gets smacked on the ass by a fairly hefty textbook. So, you know, of course it’s the book for McCoy’s class because he really needs to be reminded of things of McCoy’s going near his ass at that moment. He peers up to find Chapel wielding the weapon and tries to use his pitiful doe-eyes of  _sad_  on her so she won’t ask about why he’s being dark and twisty, but she doesn’t seem to go for that. “I got a comm-text that said you were seen out in the quad with McCoy and some hot woman.”  
  
Jim grunts his agreement to the rumor. When he looks up, Sulu and Chekov seem utterly intent on hearing more and though Uhura is trying her best to seem dismissive, she’s peering up from the notes she’s scribbling just a little too often.   
  
“Well?” Chekov exuberantly demands. “What was it! Who was the beautiful women! Is there a threesome in your future!” There is a special talent, Jim decides, that Chekov possesses in that every time he exclaims something, Jim swears that he can see the little points of exclamation trailing after him.   
  
Jim scowls and flops onto his back, staring morosely at the ceiling that’s definitely not his or McCoy’s. “I’m not sleeping with that shrew.”  
  
That seems to get Uhura’s attention away from her notes. “A woman who doesn’t fall for your charms? Amazing. Maybe she and I could start a club.”  
  
“She’s his  _wife_. He’s still married to her even though she cheated on him. Probably still cheats on him,” Jim spits out each word with all the vitriol and disdain that words like that deserve. “God, I hate how stupid I’ve been. I mean, usually I check. When I’m really liking someone, I check them out.”  
  
“I’m guessing that you and long-term relationships don’t just happen every day, then,” Uhura points out with so much sarcasm in her voice that it slows her words down so each and every one of them can drip with sarcastic disdain. “Honestly, Kirk,  _background checks_? You’re supposed to be dating them, not investigating people for fraud.”  
  
“Better safe than sorry,” he stubbornly insists. “And this time I just meet this guy and we have incredible sex and that turns into this incredible  _thing_ , except that he’s married!” he shouts up at the ceiling, wishing that he had something to throw at the deities for making everything play out like  _this_.  
  
He flops over on the bed and lets out a miserable sigh of a sound, sulking and trying to avoid having to make eye contact with a single person.   
  
“Am I an idiot because I still want him?” he wonders, voice slightly muffled by the pillow. “Aren’t I supposed to hate him and want to burn all the things he’s given me?” Though, doing that would probably rank right up there on the scale of ‘stupid ideas’ considering that most of Bones’ gifts to him are alcoholic in form. He could burn the bridge that leads him to Bones, but it’d probably set a whole quadrant of the Academy on fire in the process. Jim lets out a sound of disgust. “And you should have seen the wife. She’s gorgeous and successful and she pulls off these incredible heels. I couldn’t pull off heels like that even if I wore heels. Which I don’t!” he sharply says in an attempt to maintain his reputation, even though Sulu and Chapel look fairly dubious about his protest. “I don’t!”  
  
Now Uhura and Chekov don’t seem to believe him.  
  
“Okay, once, and that was for Gaila’s fashion week thing,” Jim mutters, grabbing a pillow and jamming it over his head to shut the world out. If it was going to throw things at him like wives and potential break-ups and friends finding out about his temporary cross-dressing situations, he’s more than allowed to block it all out. “Leave me alone,” he protests against the pillow when he feels one of them start to poke at his hips.  
  
It’s Uhura who grabs the pillow from off his face and appears mere millimeters from him.  
  
“Is this the part where we finally kiss?” Jim smirks up at her.  
  
“No,” she counters, but doesn’t move. “This is the part where you go to him and you make him choose. You force him to make a choice and you make sure it’s the  _right_ choice. You may be an obnoxious flirt with an ego the size of the Grand Canyon, but that man is better off with you than a philandering wife who only wants him back for the status and the money.”   
  
“I’m not sure that was actually complimentary to me,” Jim points out, “But coming from you, it’s like the tongue-kiss of compliments. I’ll take it.”  
  
“So you will talk to him,” Chekov says excitedly, flopping over on the bed beside Jim. It starts an avalanche of bodies and soon everyone is sharing the space of a twin, which is both incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly suggestive and if Jim weren’t bumming out on the fact that his boyfriend has got a  _wife_ , he might have made the obligatory orgy joke.  
  
Though, he’s still got time. Maybe he’ll float it out later.  
  
“So what are you going to say to him?” Chapel brings him out of his reverie to ask.  
  
Jim takes a long look at the wall in front of him, shifting his leg when the combined weight of Uhura’s hand and Sulu’s arm gets to be too much for him. He grabs the blankets to cover them all up and thinks long and hard.  
  
“Reminding him how good I am in bed is …”  
  
“No,” comes the chorus of denial.  
  
“Right. Right! I knew that,” Jim blusters with a scoff. He’s never had to prove to anyone that he should be the one picked before because it’s never really been an issue. He’s the king of the brief tumble and when there is something afoot, women and men want him. He’s never had to worry about women that other men have liked enough to marry. This is terrifying new territory for him and he’s still not sure how to deal with it. He refuses to even think for a moment about being second-best because it potentially throws off his whole world-view and he will not let Jocelyn McCoy do that to him.   
  
He can feel Chapel’s reassuring hand on his back and Chekov and Sulu seem to be arguing the merits of a logic-based argument about why Jim should be chosen.  
  
“Jim,” Uhura is the one who whispers to him. “Just tell him how you actually feel. Speak from the heart. I know you’ve got one in there two sizes too stupid and big for your brain. Tell him what he means to you and if he still chooses her after that, we’re going to get his address and we’re going to chance probation to kick his ass.”  
  
“Aw,” Jim finally says with a broad smile lighting up his face. “You really do like me, see?”  
  
“Don’t make a federal case out of it,” is Uhura’s reply before she presses a brief and chaste kiss to his cheek. “I may just like kicking asses.”  
  
“His is pretty nice.”  
  
“It would be a shame,” Chapel agrees. “But if he chooses  _her_ , it’ll be necessary warfare.”  
  
Sometimes, Jim knows that if he didn’t have these people, he’d definitely be lost in a storm without a single port even lit to drift to. As it stands now, he’s got the promise of unified asskickings in the face of a dumping.   
  
Yeah. Jim’s life, sudden-wife-appearance excluded, isn’t really half bad at all.   
  
*  
  
It comes down to a choice.   
  
Bones is still married to Jocelyn McCoy, who has cheated on him and who hasn’t outright said that she’s going to be  _stopping_  that particular habit of hers. He’s married to her, but he’s sleeping with Jim and he’s  _dating_  Jim and he’s said (in the haze of a drunken evening of amazing sex) that he’s in love with him. So Jim grabs McCoy when they’re finally alone and yanks him into one of the empty rooms in the corridor of professors’ offices.  
  
“Bones,” Jim pleads desperately. “Bones, you signed those papers. I watched you. I watched you signing them so long ago and I get what they are now. Just  _mail_  them and divorce her, let her have everything. And have me,” he says sharply.   
  
“Jim,” McCoy protests, sounding queasy.   
  
“I know. I know it’s a lot of money and a lot of property and your practice, but you’ve already started your new life,” Jim argues. “So pick me. Choose me. You love  _me_ ,” Jim insists desperately, sliding in so that he can feel McCoy’s heart beating in time with his own, the collective warmth of their bodies enough for the moment that Jim can almost feel something like hope. “Bones,” he murmurs. “You said she left you with nothing but your bones. She might have been right then, but she’s not anymore. You have me. You got me out of the deal.”  
  
“Jim, it’s not that simple.”  
  
“She’s still sleeping with him,” Jim points out, which is something they both very well know, but is also something that both of them are too afraid to admit to. “I know that you’ve caught them because I have. I went to her hotel to talk to her about letting you go so that I could have you and I heard them going at it. Bones, they don’t care about you. She wants a divorce as much as you do, but if she can stay married to you and keep your money and keep fucking your best friend, I’m pretty sure she’s going to keep doing that. For once in your life, would you please have some goddamn respect for yourself?” Jim demands. “Pick  _me_. Choose a life where you don’t just walk through the motions of a sham-marriage. Be with  _me_ , with someone you actually love, with someone you can have a future with.”  
  
Bones’ fingers are clasping Jim’s shirt and he can probably feel the heavy lift and fall of Jim’s chest as he breathes heavily. It’s no secret to either of them that Jim is nervous as he’s ever been to say any of this. He doesn’t risk his ass for love. He’ll jump out of planes and from space and he’ll climb whatever mountain dares him to by merely existing, but he doesn’t lay it all out on the line for just  _anyone_.   
  
Bones turns his hand, just enough so that his palm is brushing Jim’s chest, above his rapidly-beating heart.   
  
“We’ve been married for so many years that some part of me is always going to recognize that fact,” Bones admits hoarsely, fingers rising above Jim’s collar and probably feeling the triple-speed of his pulse that he commands by mere touch. “I really did love her, Jim. My whole heart and soul was devoted to loving her,” he insists.  
  
“The divorce doesn’t mean you’re suddenly a bad person, Bones,” Jim says and he’s not so sure where his abject desperation is hinting from. He just doesn’t want to  _lose_ and with every passing second he swears that he can feel control slipping from his grip. “God, Bones,” he exhales. “I’ve spent my whole life just waiting for something good and decent to happen and now that you’ve come along, you’re here about to choose your wife.” He eases closer into Bones’ grasp and lets him touch him wherever his fingers see fit, staring at him and pressing a long kiss to his lips. “Tell me what’s not simple. You know you can talk to me, you’ve done it for ages.”  
  
“I just keep going back to the good times,” Bones admits wearily, sliding one arm around Jim’s shoulder and letting it drape there, however awkwardly. “I remember the wedding, the honeymoon, how I could make her laugh so easily…”  
  
Jim is doing his damn best to listen and to not interrupt to point out that while she might have been Miss Giggles so long ago, she’s a cheating scheming whoreifying ex in the now. Or, you know, something along those lines (not that Jim is getting fiercely territorial in his mind since he can’t do it aloud). “But,” he prods.  
  
“But,” Bones agrees, now sardonic and bitter, “I come home from the hospital one day and she’s in bed with Clay goddamn Treadway. And then he goes and opens his mouth and then I learn it isn’t the first time they’ve done it and wasn’t their last.”  
  
“See?” Jim says desperately. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you that stopped knowing how to love and be a devoted husband. She broke her vows, she chose him. Which gives you carte blanche to make your own decisions,” he says calmly and while there’s a tiny little voice in the back of his mind chanting  _fire to the ex! Fire to the ex!_ , he’s rational and calm and mature on the outside because he knows not to push his luck. “I’m not saying that you should cut her out of your life, Bones, but I  _am_  saying that you can’t go back to the way things were. Nobody can. I mean, unless you’ve got the formula for time travel and if you do, there’s a space disaster I’d really like to prevent,” he jokes quietly, the sobriety of his tone taking away any humor from his little speech.   
  
“You know, Jim?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“This whole speech might have been more convincing,” he exhales the words, leaning in to scrape his teeth above Jim’s pulse point, kissing just under his jaw, “had you not had your hand on my ass for the last thirty seconds.”  
  
“Just keeping you from running away before you heard my words of wisdom,” Jim says decisively with a knowing smirk on his face, allowing said hand to give a light squeeze. “I’m serious, though. Be her friend, be amicable. Just don’t be her husband again when you deserve a lot better than that. And here I am, just a genius guy with prospects to spare, telling you how much I love you. I mean, if I have to get naked to remind you of…”  
  
“I get the point,” Bones interrupts him, but Jim can hear the soft laugh that he’s trying to suppress. “I just need some time, Jim. I just need to think,  _not_  necessarily that I’m going to think about going back to her, but I need to think about what the next step I take is. This is still a pretty delicate matter,” he reminds him.   
  
Jim reluctantly draws away because he knows that the next step in being mature is agreeing to this whole ‘thinking’ plan that Bones seems to think is going to be his savior. He can stay away for a couple of days. Maybe he can get Chapel to peer in on Bones and see just how he’s doing just in case Jocelyn attempts to mount her own offensive.  
  
“You know where to find me,” Jim reminds him. “And seriously, if you need anything, call. We can just go out and grab a drink, no touching or sex involved.”   
  
“And to think…”  
  
“What?” Jim asks as he turns around from his whole ‘dramatic exit’ that’d been going so well until Bones had interrupted him.   
  
“You,” Bones accuses. “I thought you were just happy to have the sex. Apparently you were hiding a real mature man under there who isn’t just happy to settle for physical gratification his whole life.”  
  
“I don’t give up when people I care about are on the line,” Jim says and feels a rush go through him at how very  _perfect_  that line is. He turns and makes sure he picks up the pace so there’s  _no way_  Bones can get the last word in when Jim’s pretty damn proud of his own.   
  
*  
  
He signs the divorce papers with Jim’s pen, sends them off with the notary that Jim had hired, and ends up drinking from a glass of scotch (neat) that Jim’s brought him. “I’m not about to bolt away from you without the constant reminders that you  _exist_ , you know,” Bones points out dryly as he stares over his shoulder at Jim.   
  
Jim is ready to swear innocence, but if he’s really honest, he’d been about two seconds away from a dance of victory. Right now, he’ll take what he can get and so he reigns in his victorious excitement and clears his throat. “Just making sure there aren’t any last dwindling loyalties that are about to fuck me over,” he says pointedly. “I’m nothing if not cautious which you should know from our nights together. Which there’ll be more of…?”  
  
While Bones has been signing these papers, he  _hasn’t_  outwardly said that it means that Jim is going to get his relationship back. He needs to tread carefully here because he’s almost at the finish line and it’d be a damn shame to lose the race by throwing out his legs right now.   
  
“I need a drink first,” Bones murmurs to himself as he pats himself down, absently searching for something like his wallet or keys. Jim dangles the keys in front of him, having swiped them from the desk. “You got plans?”  
  
It’s not ‘come away with me’ or ‘let’s make this be the first drink of our new life together’, but it’s pretty good as far as Jim’s concerned. He’ll take what he can get, especially when he likes the sound of it.   
  
“Plans with a hot doctor,” Jim concurs. “I’m all yours.”  
  
He feels even more rewarded when Bones gropes his ass on the way out of the office, glancing over Jimwards with a suspicious look.   
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing. Nothing except I heard a rumor that you’ve been going around campus calling me McCranky for the past few weeks and telling people that I have a rare form of dick rot…”  
  
“Very serious, that.”  
  
“…because according to Chapel, that’s ‘just how you show you care’,” Bones continues with a look in Jim’s direction that says he worries quite a great deal for his sanity. And it’s all true, it is. It’s not that Jim is insecure, but he has to cover his bases and if it hadn’t been an ex-wife, who knows what hot young nurse might have ensnared McCoy in her (or his) grasp if Jim hadn’t been forward-thinking about the whole thing.   
  
Jim just claps Bones on the shoulder. “Good news is, it’s not contagious! I’m still in  _perfect_  health.”  
  
“I’m going to ignore all of this in the hopes that one day, alcohol will blur it from my mind,” Bones announces with a tight smile pulling his lips across his face. “And I aim to start with that blurring today. Tequila?”  
  
Jim shivers and shudders all at once, his brain and the hairs on his arm and his cock standing at attention for that most-favored drink that had got them into this situation to begin with. He knows it’s probably a  _horrible_  idea and that his stomach is already churning because it’s quite clearly telling him in no uncertain terms that he  _shouldn’t_ , but other parts of him remember the warmth that pulsated through his body and how hot Bones’ hands were splayed on his hips.   
  
Yeah, it’s definitely worth the hangover in the morning.   
  
“I thought you’d never ask,” Jim says brightly. “C’mon, first round’s on you. Literally. I’ve wanted to attempt body shots ever since I saw you naked.”   
  
He knows that Bones’ glare really doesn’t go all the way down to the heart because Jim can see plain as day the way that he bites his lip  _just so_  and adjusts his gait. And besides, even if Bones is pissed now, he’s definitely not going to remember that later on in the evening.   
  
After all, the tequila will take care of that.   
  
 _God bless tequila_ , thinks Jim, because it hasn’t let him down just yet and he doesn’t think it’s about to start.


End file.
